In 1849 French critic, journalist and novelist Alphonse Karr wrote that “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Current situations with the removal of immigrants, and my research for the novel I’m writing, set in Texas in 1956, call to mind the 1954 removal of immigrants from the US under the program called Operation Wetback.
A brief history: When the US entered World War Two in 1942, the military draft left the country with a severe shortage of agricultural workers. To address this shortage the governments of the US and Mexico developed the so-called bracero program which allowed for the legal, temporary entry of Mexican workers into the US. The program put protocols in place to protect the workers, and established requirements regarding wages, working hours, and living conditions. These protocols were widely ignored. Farm owners paid the men less than was required and there was little they could do about it. Little they could do about the discrimination they experienced from White citizens.
In the summer of 1954, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, with the blessing of President Dwight D Eisenhower, began Operation Wetback, a massive removal campaign that primarily targeted workers in the southwestern US. Using military-style tactics, the INS and Border patrol conducted large- scale raids and apprehensions that led to family separations, business disruptions, and ethnic tensions. The workers were herded into trains, buses, and cargo ships and removed from the US in deplorable conditions some historians liken to conditions on slave ships. Historians put the number of workers removed as low as 300,000 and as high as 1.3 million.
Following a public outcry, the government declared victory and assured the American public the border was secure. But then, as now, workers returned in search of a living wage. The bracero program officially existed until December 31, 1964. By then, the Civil Rights movement was heating up, raising questions about due process and the treatment of immigrants and citizens alike.
More than seventy years after Operation Wetback, these questions remain at the heart of today’s raids and removals.
In my forthcoming novel, when a wealthy landowner is found dead, suspicion immediately falls on one of his Mexican workers. But then the worker too, is murdered and the small -town sheriff is tasked with cutting through prejudices, rumors, and accusations to get to the truth. I don’t have a publication schedule yet, but I’ll keep you posted. The working title is A QUIET LITTLE TOWN.
